Windows Desktop

Brad Sams (my boss at Petri.com) published a story last night about how Microsoft has started to push out Windows 10 upgrades to domain-joined PCs. Note that the PC doesn’t upgrade via Windows Update; the user will be prompted if they want to update, and then a deliberately confusing screen [...]

In previous posts I talked about how Windows Update was breaking the Intel HD graphics adapters in my Lenovo Yoga and Toshiba KIRAbook Ultrabooks, and I also posted a solution that should prevent Windows Update from downloading drivers. Well … nothing has worked, and I regularly face broken [...]

Edit: the solution here does not work. The Windows Update Blocker offers a solution that works until Microsoft releases a new broken version of the broken driver. Frustrated much? The release of Windows 10 has reminded many of us that Windows Update is usually the worst place to get a driver for [...]

I upgraded a couple of Ultrabooks to Windows 10 in the last week and both displayed (sorry!) the same issue; the graphics driver was not working correctly. My Toshiba KIRAbook couldn’t share to an external display. My Lenovo Yoga S1 had the same problem. I opened Device Manager and saw the above [...]

This is an exciting time in time in a Windows version’s life cycle. We’re just 2 weeks away from initial availability and things are starting to appear or shake up. The Verge (and everyone else) is reporting that Microsoft has selected Build 10240 (divisible by 16, which is important, oddly) as [...]

Every presentation I’ve seen on Windows 10 has spent half of the time talking about and demonstrating Cortana, Microsoft’s latest “The Curse of Zune” feature. Cortana, first introduced in Windows Phone, only works in a few countries. On Windows 10, as far as I know, it only works in the [...]

I’ll be away that week and I’ll have much better life changing things going on 🙂 I hop you enjoy downloading and installing whatever is available that evening at around 8pm UK/Irish time. Technorati Tags: Windows 10 Please follow and like [...]

Microsoft made the latest Technical Preview release available to the public on Friday evening. Note that this is the edition for PCs/laptops/hybrid devices, and not the phone/small tablet build which will be coming in February. A blog post by Microsoft goes into more details on this preview [...]

I heard “Windows as a Service” or WaaS being mentioned twice at an event on Wednesday. Straight away, as a blogger/speaker, I knew what questions people would ask. Here’s what this means: Windows as a Service is a mindset from Microsoft. You don’t use an OS; your use apps and content. The [...]

I took the plunge yesterday while preparing an Azure presentation – I performed an in-place upgrade of Windows 8.1 on my Toshiba KIRAbook to Windows 10. Initially I tried to do it via USB, but I’d not prepared a UEFI stick for the device (thanks for the tip Hans Vredevoort). I copied the [...]

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About this Blog

This blog serves 2 purposes. Firstly, I want to share information with other IT pros about the technologies we work with and how to solve problems we often face. I've worked with technologies from the desktop to the server, Active Directory, System Center, security and virtualisation.

Secondly, I use my blog as a notebook. There's so much to learn and remember in our jobs that it's impossible to keep up. By blogging, I have a notebook that I can access from anywhere. It has saved my proverbial many times in the past.

Waiver

Anything you do to your IT infrastructure, applications, services, computer or anything else is 100% down to your own responsibility and liability. Aidan Finn bears no responsibility or liability for anything you do. Please independently confirm anything you read on this blog before doing whatever you decide to do.